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Diamond Rings, now with more polish, playing Mod Club on Nov. 29

David Bowie once famously proved his own hypothesis that if one looked and acted the part of a pop star, then actual pop stardom would soon fall in line.

The same approach — albeit on a less extravagant scale — paid off for Oshawa-raised John O'Regan when, in the summer of 2009, he decided that a little more panache than was commonly accepted in indie rock was needed to present the unapologetically pop-tastic new material he'd lately been cooking up in his bedroom with a guitar, “a couple of crappy keyboards” and GarageBand.

He trawled through thrift-store bins and his mom's closet for some garish new duds, got his makeup-artist cousin, Lisa Howard, to fancy him up a bit.

He also enlisted his videographer pal, Colin Medley, to shoot a bargain-basement video for the charming single “All Yr Songs” and, suddenly, the blogosphere was all atwitter over this fancy-pants Diamond Rings chap.

O'Regan — who plays a sold-out Mod Club on Thursday — was, until then, best known locally as the frontman for dark-hued post-punk outfit the D'Urbervilles. However, he subsequently got much more mileage than he'd anticipated out of Diamond Rings and his terrific 2010 debut, Special Affections.

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Favourable critical notices piled up on both sides of the Atlantic, fashion magazines and clothing companies came calling. Swedish pop pixie Robyn wound up choosing him as the opening act on her 2011 North American tour. O'Regan's trial run at pop stardom had proven rather successful.

“It's crazy. I started this as a means to keep myself busy once I'd finished art school,” he laughs. “I kind of just had all this extra time and was, like: ‘OK, well, I'll write some other songs. I'll try something different. I'll try making music on a computer. Hey, let's try making a music video.'

“Everything I've ever done, everything my team has ever done, has always been kind of a big, public experiment, which I think is probably the way it is for a lot of people. I'm really fortunate that people connect with what I'm doing and are excited or inspired by what I'm doing — that's the ultimate compliment that you can ever receive or hope to receive — so I'm just trying to keep it going and make it bigger (and) I'm totally down with taking this as far as it wants to go.”

Diamond Rings is by no means Lady Gaga, but O'Regan returned to the public eye this fall with a glossier and more sure-footed second album, Free Dimensional, and a bigger, brassier stage show that now sees him fronting a three-piece band on tour instead of fumbling with his MacBook between songs.

The record is bursting with the same indelible melodies and heartfelt, intelligent wordplay that made Special Affections such a keeper, just brought to a slightly brighter shine this time with some assistance from former Björk/Killers producer Damian Taylor. Not everyone loves it; Exclaim! calls the new album “infectiously positive” but Pitchfork says it’s “more professional, (but) lacking the anything-goes magic” of the first collection.

Where the first album — “the first album I'd ever made on my own, ever, in any way, shape or form” — was questing and uncertain in its tackling of questions of identity, however, this one is much more sure of itself. The title of the lead single says it all, really: “I'm Just Me.”

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“I know a lot of people have really liked it, but I read some of the (bad) reviews, too, and it's upsetting that there's this idea that the first album was this really naïve, pure kind of indie concoction that I'd stirred up and that this new one now is cold and calculated and major-label and everything else,” says O'Regan, 27, who released Free Dimensional via Secret City Records in Canada and the Virgin/EMI-affiliated Astralwerks internationally.

“There's really nothing that's gone into this record that was any different than the first other than lots more experience and lots more confidence — it's very much what I wanted to do and what I wanted to say. More than anything, it's a celebration of the fact that I've been doing this for a while now and I'm more confident at what I do and better at what I do.”

Lest longtime O'Regan followers be concerned that he's straying from his roots amidst the costume changes and chugging dance-pop anthems that characterize the current Diamond Rings stage show, he's actually been surprised during the two-month North American tour, now taking him back home, how much old habits die hard.

“When I made the record, I didn't really know how it was gonna translate live until I got up on stage with the band, and it's way more of a rock show than I thought it would be,” he says. “When I went into making the album, I was, like, ‘There are only gonna be one or two songs with guitars. I'll make one or two to keep people happy.' And then I ended up adding them to everything.

“The fourth track on the album, ‘Put Me On,' that was supposed to be a total synth song and then it got left alone in the studio for a few hours with me and, like, a six-pack of beer and by the time Damian came back in, I was guitar-soloing over everything. ‘Turn up the distortion! We're adding power chords. We're adding solos. We're going all out!' ”

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